Alexander Iosad

@iosad.fyi

1273 Followers 205 Following

Progress, policy, practice. Past: TBI, edtech VC, history of science DPhil. AI & tech optimist, not solutionist. Fan of universities, state capacity, 🏏. School governor, occasionally. Diasporan ✡️.

Priority reforms The new digital centre will catalyse change across the public sector. It will: • Create the National Data Library, making it easier to find and reuse data across public sector organisations; this supports better prevention, intervention and detection, and opens up data to industry, the voluntary sector, start-ups and academics to accelerate Al-driven innovation and boost growth.
The appeal of the phrase is obvious. MPs who rely on it can hide behind an imagined voter, rather than exercising their own judgment, reducing themselves to one-person parliamentary focus groups. For analysts, it offers a crutch of faux objectivity. Saying that a policy is wrong or immoral is banned for supposedly objective observers. So say it is a bad look to maintain your credentials as a shrewd political operative. Such an attitude breeds a cynical indifference to the consequences of politics. Whether things are actually important comes second to whether voters notice. If people found New Labour's mantra in the 1990s that "What matters is what works" a dismal philosophy, then "What matters is what plays well" is even worse. If looking shrewd is the intention, the effect is often the opposite. A focus on appearances leads to naive analysis.
A British e-ID could supercharge public service reform - helping, for example, to integrate personal health records and patient data and streamline welfare payments.
A UK e-ID would require debate and consultation. It would not be easy. But if Britain truly wants a modern state, it is an idea whose moment has come.
Nominate a small number of departments as "Al exemplars" that are expected to lead the way on using Al in their work and introduce a new working culture. These departments should actively engage with successful UK tech companies in their domains and replicate their best practices, down to the design of office space. Newer departments like DSIT and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) would be good candidates for this.
It is important to distinguish between "sovereign Al", in the sense of end-to-end ownership of a model and how it is used, and sovereign Al capability, meaning a level of control and confidence in the Al stack (from the training data sets to fine-tuning to the computational and serving infrastructure) that is appropriate to the use case. Not everything needs to be developed in-house, but rather governments should make strategic decisions on which components of the stack to source externally from highly trusted partners and which ones to build internally.
"A line graph titled 'Software eats cars?' showing monthly 'robotaxi' trips in California from August 2023 to August 2024. While the legend includes three companies - Tesla, Cruise, and Waymo - the data tells a striking story: Waymo (in red) shows dramatic growth from about 20,000 to over 300,000 trips, Cruise (light pink) shows minimal activity in early months before disappearing, and Tesla (dark gray), despite being in the legend, shows zero activity throughout the entire period. This absence of Tesla data, juxtaposed with its inclusion in the legend, makes a pointed statement about the gap between promises and reality in autonomous driving. The subtitle reads 'After a decade of promises and tens of billions of dollars, autonomy might be starting to work.' Source: California Public Utilities Commission." [Alt-text by Claude]
A line graph showing the number of pension credit claimants per week from April 2024 to September 2024, with the Policy in Practice logo in the top left. The y-axis ranges from 0 to 14,000 claimants, with gridlines at 2,000 intervals. The line remains relatively stable around 4,000 claimants from April through July 2024. At this point, marked by a green arrow and text reading 'Winter Fuel Payment changes announced,' there is a dramatic increase. The line jumps to approximately 8,000 claimants in August 2024, briefly dips to about 6,000, then rises sharply to peak at around 13,000 before declining slightly to 12,000 by September 2024. The graph demonstrates a significant impact of the Winter Fuel Payment changes announcement on claimant numbers, showing roughly a threefold increase from the pre-announcement period.
From the FT article: “However, several trusts have reported finding it very valuable. South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Forgdation Trust, one of the FDP's pilot sites, has reported a 37 per cent reduction in the number of days patients remained in hospital after they were ready to go home since adopting the programme.”